There is a reason why a national unity government which includes the opposition has been so difficult to stitch together in Tunisia. It is because remnants of the old regime are trying to ride a tidal wave over which they have no control. It is only when they all go, and fresh elections held, that political calm will be restored.

He said France was so close to Tunisia that it had been unable to stand back and see the situation clearly. "Behind the emancipation of women, the drive for education and training, the economic dynamism, the emergence of a middle class, there was a despair, a suffering, a sense of suffocation. We have to recognise that we underestimated it," Sarkozy said.

In a remarkable shift, the police, previously the enforcers of Mr. Ben Ali’s rule, organized a protest of their own on the city’s central artery, Bourguiba Boulevard. They wore red armbands in solidarity with the revolution, complained that Mr. Ben Ali and his family had put cronies in charge of the security forces and demanded a trade union that could negotiate for higher wages. Tunisians were stunned to see police officers, once silent and terrifying, complaining about their working conditions in interviews with Al Jazeera.